The room nearly exploded with noise. Carly was incredulous by this news. “How can you not?”
Adjusting her hair, she looked him in the eyes as she spoke, “We cannot prove it’s Dombrowski first of all.”
Anticipating Carly’s next question, she replied before he asked. “Yes we have the Hasan files you brought from Las Vegas, but that is it. What we are talking about is unfathomable for the general public to digest. Without Hasan alive to testify, it’s just a video file subject to speculation. You understand don’t you? We have no physical way to link Dombrowski to Jonathan Carter. The dental records don’t match, the fingerprints don’t match those on file, neither does the physical description or what is left of it anyway,” she added with a snide look towards Sully.
Diane interrupted, “Surely you can use DNA from the Colorado murders with Jonathan’s?”
“There is no DNA from Colorado!”
“What do you mean?” Carly asked. “Call Dave Ramirez in Denver he can get it for you!”
She shook her head, as she explained, “I did. It’s gone. Thrown out. Destroyed. When Denver archived old cases they tossed out a lot of physical evidence. With Dombrowski supposedly executed by the State, someone made the decision to have his DNA samples added to the list of physical evidence they wouldn’t keep anymore. They didn’t even put it into any kind of database. Add in the fact, MemoryLock erased it from the national data base and poof, Dombrowski is gone. The only items which survived were a few of the more macabre things: the knife, some of the nails he used as a crown, and so forth. The only reason these things survived was for those curiosity displays you see in police departmental museums. You’ve seen them, every town and city has one. Funny little display cases with some infamous bit of evidence for the tourists and school kids to gawk at. Beyond that, everything else is gone.”
Carly was shocked. Diane reached for his hand, surprised at how cold it was to the touch as she grasped it in hers hoping to help him through the disappointment. Wanting answers herself, she asked the obvious,
“So what’s next? How is this playing out in the media?”
“Officially?” she added as an afterthought recognizing the truth might not be told.
“You might have wondered why the press hasn’t been all over all of you?”
Sully spoke up for the first time, “Yes we did. We thought it was out of respect for the Inspector. The department wanted to let her lead the way with them once she had recovered.”
“Well that is what they are being told. You all will have a press conference tomorrow or the next day when you feel up to it Diane. The official word is Jonathan Carter was the killer. We are using a bio straight from Oona’s description. MemoryLock had done such a thorough job creating him we decided to go with it. Professor Thompson has been credited as having provided invaluable assistance to the department in recognizing the copycat nature of Carter’s M.O. to the Denver murders and apprehending Carter.”
“And we just go along with this?” Hernandez asked incredulously.
Without looking at anyone directly, the ADA gave them what was to become their marching orders. “Detective, everyone involved in solving this case will get kudos beyond what they can imagine. There will be promotions and awards. One or two of you will parlay this into bigger and better things I am sure and deservedly so. Professor Thompson there is probably a second book to write if you want. Anyone who tries to bring Dombrowski and MemoryLock into it will stand alone. And trust me when I say alone and in direct opposition to the department. The department will brandish them as a crackpot and the consequences will not be pleasant. Short term or long.”
“But why? It can’t be for the lack of an identification? Can it?” Carly asked.
“On a higher level? No! The District Attorney and others, including authorities in Colorado don’t want anyone to know such a thing could have happened. The public doesn’t need to know that Frankenstein did exist. The public doesn’t need to know the impossible is possible.”
“So what happens with Merriwhether? Does he just skate on his atrocities?” Carly almost spat as a question.
He knew he was out of line as soon as he saw the look on the woman’s face. “Sorry I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Professor don’t apologize. I understand and if I were in your shoes I would be pretty damned angry too. However, Merriwhether doesn’t skate. With Oona at the ready to testify, we have him on accessory to murder. The story is he knew about Carter and did nothing to report him. In fact, we have him on obstruction as well. We can claim he was treating Carter and knew he was a risk for violent and aberrant behavior and did nothing. The bio on the killer will include episodes of molestation in his past as well as a fascination with Dombrowski. Thus after he was raped in jail, he started emulating his ‘idol’. Merriwhether knew all this and didn’t try to stop it. Finally, we have Brother Damien back in Denver who will testify Merriwhether ordered the hit on Hasan.”
“What was the rationale for killing Hasan?” Diane wondered aloud.
“Hasan had helped with some illegal medical experiments and was trying to blackmail Merriwhether.”
Sully let out a low whistle. “A neat little package.”
“Not quite. We don’t have Merriwhether. He’s gone.”
“But if he surfaces you have him?”
“He will be lobotomy material in California and life imprisonment in Colorado.”
Those in the room sat silent, digesting everything the diminutive woman had told them. As she wolfed down a piece of pizza, she could tell these were good soldiers. They might not like it but they would walk the walk. Trying to bring them out of their reveries, she gave them something else to think about it. “I can fill you in on the details later if you want to look at it from the D.A.’s prospective. But enough about them, I've got to fill you gumshoes in on departmental gossip.”
Milking a moment of silence for effect, she leaned forward and in almost in a whisper confided, “Chief Michaels is out. Chapman too.” Her dramatic pause, was popped by the near screams of delight from Diane and Lassiter, while Hernandez let out a soft, “Gracias, mi Dios.” Sully just smiled.
“How?”
“District Attorney Chang did it this morning. He went into the mayor's office and told him flat out the case could have been settled a least a week earlier had the Chief not went off half-cocked and ran Professor Thompson out of town on a rail. Chang's had it in for Michaels for years, as he always thought the Chief had served past his prime and his political connections were the only reason he stayed on. Chang had it in for Chapman even worse. He just thought the Assistant Deputy was a pompous bureaucratic sycophant. Had Chapman not had the relationship with Michael's, as chief lackey, Chapman wouldn't have made it past private security guard in the real world.”
“Tossing me out on my butt, did make a bit of sense. How did the D.A. play that into a dismissal of the top two brass in the department?” Carly wondered aloud.
“Easy, Chang's the next governor. The election just hasn't happened yet. He had more on Michaels than this. Michaels had screwed up the Disney robbery case pretty badly. Then last year when the Liberty bank hostage crisis went down, Chang had limited evidence that Michaels' intervention might have caused two of the deaths. Now that the Chief is out, Chang has two of the patrol officers from Liberty ready to testify against him. They wouldn't before, as they were afraid. Can't say I blame them.” To the wonder of the others, the tiny figure devoured a second slice of pizza in a breath, while reaching for a third.
“So who's in?”
“Not sure yet, but you've got a shot, Diane.”
All eyes in the room shot towards Diane, as she nervously mumbled, “Me? You've got to be kidding. I've no experience in administration, never wanted any.”
“That's to your advantage. Chang doesn't want a career brass polisher in as chief. He wants a career cop. You've got the cop skills. The newspapers will be adding a bit of bravado to your biography so you'll s
ell well. That little stint as a streetwalker the other night has made you legendary in some circles. At any rate, they'll put somebody in as the 'Acting Chief' for now. After the election, Chang will want to pick his own person. The mayor will be in no position to thwart him. You might want to think about it.”
“Are you sure Chang is thinking about the Inspector,” Lassiter quizzed, always playing the devil's advocate.
Washing down the remains of a fourth slice of pie, McCullogh smiled knowingly. “I wouldn't be sitting here telling you all this if Chang hadn't given his blessing. Consider it a fishing expedition. Are you game, Diane?”
The events of the past two months rushed through Diane's heart. From the burden of solving an unsolvable case, to the loss of her sister, to her near death at the hands of Dombrowski, Diane couldn't answer. “I've got to think about that one.”
“Good answer. I imagine Chang would think you were too over eager if you said yes at this stage of the game. Think about it. It can happen.”
Looking at Carly, Marsha smiled. “Now professor, let's satisfy your curiosity. Is there anything else I can tell you?”
“What about the lab? The one at the college, up state?”
“Gone. Disappeared. Oona didn't even know it. It appears that Oona didn't know a lot of what was going on during the past year or so. The lab was disassembled and carted away almost overnight. The department chair who was affiliated with the project told us a clinician came in to his office one day and said the project funding had been cut and the project was closing down.
Nobody heard any more about it, since then.”
“Did anybody at the college know what happened at the lab when it was operating?”
“Johnson and one of Diane's detectives went up again yesterday after we got the information from Oona. They talked to the faculty but they really didn't know that much. They got a little more information from some of the graduate students who were still around and had worked in the program, but it's sketchy at best.”
“It seems as if Merriwhether or rather MemoryLock had been a major benefactor at the college for a number of years. In fact, the last two years his donations and abilities to attract government grants kept the college open. You know the story Professor, a small private college with declining enrollments needs a sugar daddy. When Merriwhether showed up with a suitcase full of cash and fancy experiment, the Board of Regents gave him carte blanche. No questions asked. Anyway, MemoryLock had a pretty sophisticated laboratory set up in the psychology building where they conducted some very highly secretive studies. A few graduate students worked the program under the supervision of one Oliver Harcourt, Ph.D.”
Hearing the name of Harcourt raised Carly's eyebrows. “Getting to be a small world. Dr. Harcourt seems to be everywhere. Just like Brother Damien.”
“So it seems. Anyway he ran the laboratory. The graduate students never met any of the subjects or really were involved in the programming. For the most part they monitored the computers, subject responses, and the equipment performance. High tech baby-sitters if you will. Everything they did was set up in a cookie-cutter fashion, so there was no free-lancing at least on the part of the college or the students.”
“It seems Harcourt was doing enough free-lancing of his own,” Sully offered up his first comments of the conversation. “His damn sex experiments put a nasty wrinkle in this whole affair.”
“Without a doubt, Harcourt might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Anyway, Merriwhether showed up pretty infrequently, as he seemed to let Harcourt oversee all the experiments and run the lab. Harcourt had a graduate committee role for most of the students as they got practicum credits for working with him.”
“Wasn't the college involved, at all?”
“Surprisingly not much. The chair of the psychology department had only ever been down to the lab once in nearly three years. The dean of the school only twice. As long as the checks from MemoryLock kept coming in, the school left Merriwhether and the project alone. Some of the rationale was based upon the government grants in part, as Merriwhether claimed that some of the work was under the auspices of national security.”
“National security? How in the hell could he say that?”
“Quite easily. He was getting nearly thirty million dollars annually from the defense department in the form of a military grant for psychological conditioning. It appears that MemoryLock was a favorite son of the Defense Department and Merriwhether had strong personal ties to a couple of Congressmen. It all appeared legit, and it was quite lucrative. The smell of pork is quite strong when you start looking into MemoryLock. It will be interesting to see the scrambling in Washington when all this gets into the press. Can you imagine the hue and cry we'll hear when Joe Citizen hears his tax dollars went to a program that was supposedly treating Jonathan Carter?”
“Amazing,” Carly sighed, the exasperation in his voice was evident. “The types of uses the military could find for the kind of programming Merriwhether was doing is a little scary. Imagine an army of programmed assassins. Their identities unknown, harboring no logical sense of morals or ethics. It would make them the ultimate weapon. The possibilities for clandestine operations for re-programming world leaders, statesmen or just the general population would be a possibility also. The laundry list of uses for this kind of programming is unlimited.”
The attorney continued, “In looking at the time-frame, the lab suddenly shut down shortly after Jonathan-Petr got blasted in that hotel room. I would hazard a guess that Merriwhether didn't want anybody to start an investigation into his business if Dombrowski as Carter was found alive. A thorough review of the lab's operations probably wouldn't bear up under a real close scrutiny. The last graduate to work there told Johnson that she came in for her assigned hours to find the place empty. No equipment, no subject, no Harcourt. Poor kid had to take another semester of classes because she never got the grade from the program. What's even more amazing nobody at the school knew they had left. Nobody saw them leave, they hadn't told anyone. A real case of ‘here today, gone tomorrow'.”
“Any clue to where they went?”
“Nothing. No one's seen Harcourt for several weeks, including Oona. She thinks that Merriwhether has another lab somewhere, but doesn't have a clue as to its whereabouts.”
“Hell, it could be anywhere. Another small college, a private hospital or a clinic. Maybe in Mexico or South America.”
Leaning back in her chair, sated by the nearly whole pizza she had devoured, the petite figure yawned, and dropped the final bombshell on the group, “The irony is what Oona didn't know about besides the bulk of MemoryLock's operation was the fact she is broke.”
“Broke? Hell she should have been a billionaire or at least a mega-millionaire.”
“He is, she isn't. In reality he had set almost everything up in his name. What little they held jointly he had been selling off, converting everything to cash or negotiable bonds. The same for whatever he owned, and the reverse on any debts. Slowly but surely he's been selling off his majority share of MemoryLock. Somewhere he's got a few hundred million in cash or liquid securities. Right now anything Oona has left in MemoryLock is on hold, as the SEC put a hold on all trading in the stock until an investigation is completed.”
Carly pondered the situation for a moment before addressing the group, “If Merriwhether has the cash from selling his shares of MemoryLock, he could buy his way into a lot of places. Who knows, maybe he's got lab space in a military installation? Maybe ours, maybe another country's. The potential for trouble here is unlimited. A hundred million or more is a welcome passport in every two-bit dictatorship from the Middle East to Asia. He could be anywhere, doing anything.”
“What's the next step? This thing has gotten much bigger than just a squad full of LA homicide detectives working a murder case. We did our job and put away the killer,” Sully snapped with an air of despair, “but the rest of this stuff is out of our league. When you're talking SEC, third world c
ountries, and the like, I know I'm a small fish in a very big pond.”
Finishing the story, the district attorney continued, “The Mayor's office called this morning. It seems as if a task force from the FBI, the Justice Department, and the National Security Office will be swooping in later in the week. They'll have a run at all our files, interview the principals in the case, and then launch their own investigation. Who knows what they'll find.”
“Hopefully it will be Merriwhether and Harcourt.”
“What about Oona?”
“She's in big trouble, but she's cooperating to the maximum. Depending on what she knows and what we can find, she might cut another deal, particularly if she can lead us to her husband. All things considered, she'll get off relatively easy in spite of all the craziness she's responsible for. The fact is she will end up in 'Witness Relocation' when we bring in Merriwhether. One thing's certain....”
“What's that?”
“She's terrified of Merriwhether. She figures that he'll come after her sooner or later.”
Shaking her head, Lassiter added, “What's might even be scarier for her, is the fact he might send out somebody who will make Dombrowski look like an altar boy. She'll be looking over her shoulder the rest of her life, federal protection not withstanding. After all, Merriwhether appears to have friends in government, not just politicians either. I have a feeling he knows every underground operative willing to break a rule or two. If he can tap into the FBI and Interpol computers just to fudge Dombrowski's fingerprints and DNA, he sure in the hell will have a chance at finding out where Oona went.”
Carly looked over and saw Diane had fallen asleep, the medication and the security of a room full of friends had provided the necessities for a well-deserved nap. Leaving Lassiter as part of the unofficial but every-present guard the group had kept up since her hospitalization, the rest of them meandered into a waiting room down the hall. The threesome of Sully, Hernandez, and Carly bade the diminutive District Attorney good-bye, thankful for the information she had provided them. They smiled as she strode smartly down the hall, her brief case in one hand and the pizza box containing the last two slices in the other.
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